Tousled Bird, Mad Vile

By Anonymous · Sept. 28, 2008

WARNING: The following experience is the personal account of an unprofessional body mod "artist." I not only recommend NOT trying any of this by one's own self at home, but also suggest a great deal of thought before getting such a modification done by a professional.

Do NOT emulate my behavior.

By my deeds am I known, and I am known as Vile.

This is how it came to be after many years of sneaking around to get my way. In all honesty, I wasn't so great a person as I would lie and cheat and use any means necessary to get what I wanted.

After a series of traumatic events, I reformed, vowing never to lie or steal again, and accomplish great things under a code of honor.

One night, I was pondering at 2 AM or so thinking back on all the things I now had that meant a lot to me.

Of these things was my crow fascination that eventually turned into constant area of interest for me.

As a symbol of my reformation and success in getting away from an abusive family and finding the strength to move on through a ridiculous stream of sometimes traumatic and other just plain tedious events, I decided to brand myself with a symbol as a monument to how I suffered and came out alive with just enough sanity to make it through the day without wanting to strap a bomb to my chest or something. I knew which symbol, or symbols I wanted: the Kanji for Karasu, or crow, seeing as how that had been a prominent defining concept in my life, and the Kanji for the word Dangerous, since what I was about to do, and everything I had been doing since, was nothing short of dangerous.

The latter was the one I chose for this particular date.

At first I thought about cutting the symbols in, but with such ill-funded means as the blade from a shaving razor, it would not only have taken forever, but it would have been messy, inaccurate, and really friggin hurt since I'd have to go over the same spot over and over and over again. By some odd manner of coincidence, the Cure's "Burn" came on my playlist at that moment, and seeing as how it WAS from The Crow soundtrack, and that was how I had for so long described my mental, emotional, and eventually physical agony, I couldn't think of a better way to etch in my design.

The first part was a simple find and draw from the internet.

The hard part was actually burning the design over my ink-pen drawing. The tool I used was a metal pot chipping thing I once used to carve a glass heart for the love of my life. Seeing as how this was yet another sentimental item, I found it fitting that it's role in my little art project would play as big a part as the girl herself did in my life.

I heated the tip over a simple gas stove, as I am again, broke, and began etching. Well, it took about 2 seconds to realize that fire is in fact, hot. I set the tool down resolving to have someone else help me later and went to grab a snack. When I looked back at the design I drew however, the part I had touched with the tool had turned white and rose up a little.

Inspired, I went back to the kitchen to finish. It only took half an hour to etch the entire design into my forearm, but what really surprised me is that as my sense of pride grew with the thought of "Oh wow. I'm actually doing this. It's working!" I grew more bold with pressing the now hot and charred metal to my bare flesh only to realize that it hurt less and less. Probably the coolest part was that every time I traced and filled in part of the ink-stained design, the black pen disappeared and was replaced with a cool looking, albeit somewhat painful white mark.

Once completed, I scraped away the extra burnt off flesh and washed the now completely white design down with cold water. The feeling of the cool water on my blanched and seared flesh could only be described in one word: Ouch.

Once I had washed and cleaned myself up once or twice, the deed was done and it was time for the healing process to begin. I looked at the design probably a million times thinking about what it meant to me, and what it meant that it was there, a more or less permanent part of me. I had gone from a sneaky brat who took every precaution not to take a hit or get hurt, to a man who had proven to himself the worth of his long-lived sacrifice and what beauties mere preserverence could bring to an otherwise ordinary, or even cowardly person. More than pleased with my accomplishment, as well as how dang sexy the thing turned out to be, I decided it was time for this crow to go to sleep for the night.

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submitted by: Anonymouson: 28 Sept. 2008in
Scarification

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Artist: Mad+VileStudio: HomeLocation: Lancaster+California

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